Brussels, 20/07/2015 (Agence Europe) - Copa and Cogeca have recently called on the European Commission to take urgent action to offset the severe impact of the Russian crisis on the EU pigmeat sector.
Copa President Albert Jan Maat pointed out that the pigmeat sector was feeling the full force of “Russia's unjustified and disproportionate import restrictions”. In spite of the introduction of the private storage scheme, prices have fallen and remain at critical levels. Maat explained that the situation is “forcing some out of business, which is particularly worrying when demand is expected to rise in the longer term.” He believes that if the situation does not improve, member states must be allowed to negotiate with the Russian authorities their export certificates in order to re-establish trade in pigmeat as soon as possible.
Cogeca President Christian Pees explained that they were urging the EU to intensify negotiations with Russia to get the SPS restrictions imposed on EU pig meat exports in early 2014 lifted because “This would enable exports to Russia to resume for some products like edible offal and bacon which were not included in the global list of banned products resulting from the political dispute between the EU and Russia. We believe it's crucial to find alternative markets and to tackle the long list of SPS and bureaucratic barriers in place in non-EU countries like Russia, Belarus, Japan, etc, some of which have free trade agreement with the EU including South Korea, Peru, Colombia. We also call for targeted measures in the regions worst affected by the ban”.
At the most recent Agriculture Council, Commissioner Phil Hogan said the extension of the period for storing pork products last spring in exchange for EU aid (volume would be around 60,000 t), “is not possible” and the reopening of this regime is not appropriate because it involves the “main instrument” for market management and should not be abused. This problem was raised by Austria, Belgium and Poland, supported by Hungary and France (Germany emphasised the need to develop export outlets instead).
The Commission believes that the European pigmeat market “has to find a new balance”. The Commissioner for Agriculture also affirmed that current difficulties now had more to do with expanding production (+5% over the first quarter of 2015 and an estimated rise of 2.6% for the whole of the year), “than the lack of access to the Russian market”. In this connection, Austria, Belgium and Poland asked for the negotiations to be stepped up with Russia in an effort to kickstart Community product exports that had not been included in the embargo, such as edible meat offals and lard. This is the same request as that formulated by the EU agricultural cooperative organisations (Copa-Cogeca). (Lionel Changeur)